To investigate what happened in the past and apply its own laws. No one in the new team had anything to do with anything that may have happened in 2016. They were making Television Shows at the time. Iral i also said it is credible to me that he would have been influenced by financial or personal motives in carrying out duties as Vice President. A different issue is whether some individual ukrainians may have attempted to influence the 2016 election or thought they could buy influence. That is at least plausible given ukraines reputation for corruption. The accusation that he acted independently did not seem credible to me. I connected mayor giuliani and the aide by text lantand later t i phone. They met in person on august 2, 2019. In conversations with me following that meeting which i did not attend, mr. Giuliani said that he had stressed the importance of ukraine conducting investigations into what happened in the past and mr. Yermoc stressed, he said it is their position to conduc
referring to that, is the date for the white house visit? that s correct. now two days later on august 12th, you receive another text message from the aide which reads, special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the united states, especially with the alleged involvement of some ukrainian politicians. i wanted to declare this is unacceptable and we want to conduct a transparent investigation of all available facts and episodes which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future. now ambassador volker, this was a draft, was it not, of the statement that you and mr. giuliani and the aide and ambassador sondland were discussing? this is the first draft of that mr. him after the conversations that we had. and does it not mention burisma or the 2016 election
lutsenko not credible and told mr. giuliani so? thank you, mr. chairman, the allegations themselves including those against ambassador yovanovitch did not appear to me to be credible at all. i know her to be an incredibly competent professional. someone i worked with for many, many years t the suggestions that she was acting in some inappropriate manner were not credible to me. i have known vice president biden for a long time. those accusations were not credible. and then separate from that, i also was aware of the political situation in ukraine. we had a situation where the president appeared to not be in a favorable position going into the elections where it was increasingly apparent then candidate zelenskyy was going to win. as is often the case in ukraine, a change in power would mean change in prosecutoral pow irz
they met in person on august 2, 2019. in conversations with me following that meeting which i did not attend, mr. giuliani said that he had stressed the importance of ukraine conducting investigations into what happened in the past and mr. yermoc stressed, he said it is their position to conduct investigations as part of this process anyway. mr. giuliani said he believed ukrainian president needed to make a statement about fighting corruption and that he had discussed this with mr. yermoc, i said i didn t think this would abe problem since that is the government s position anyway. i followed up and he said they would be prepared to make a statement. there was no mention of vice president biden. rather, in referencing burisma in the 2016 election
who she call in the process? sondland and mr. giuliani. what did do you if anything to determine what that was? after that particular handoff meeting, i proceeded to look it up on the internet. i googled it. did you find that it had some association with hunter bide snen. yes. did you dmot listen to this call but you testified you were surprised and troubled when you read the call record after it was released on september 25th. you also said that after reading the call record, it was clear to you that the biden-burisma and 2016 election investigation that s president trump discussed on the call were designed to serve the president s political interests not the national